FF14 Becoming More "Solo Friendly" is bad, Maybe

FF11 got trusts you can take with you anywhere so you can actually play the game, they are readying xiv to die and forget it like SE forgot ff11.

I hate trusts and how they take away dev time and resources. Just a make a Hall of the Intermediate. Let people call other players noobs and idiots. The game is already easy enough that a mouse on a trackball can figure out proper placement.

And don't give me that bs of "they're future proofing the game". Hroths and vieras still don't have new hairstyles. Yoshida is a hack.

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Originally Posted by FawkesWyznfarr

I hate trusts and how they take away dev time and resources. Just a make a Hall of the Intermediate. Let people call other players noobs and idiots. The game is already easy enough that a mouse on a trackball can figure out proper placement.

And don't give me that bs of "they're future proofing the game". Hroths and vieras still don't have new hairstyles. Yoshida is a hack.

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okay

I hate how they waste their time to please egamers and streamers, I hate they waste their time on bullshit like heldi and stupid ass jokes instend of an emotional story.. I hate how they waste their time forcing us to play with others when no other mmo in existance MAKES U PLAY WITH PPL for every little thing.


So i guess pvp should be removed because i hate, I guess jokes completely should be removed since i find stupid...

and I guess forced dungeons for story should be removed since i hate it

basicly what ur saying expect u will dismiss this because its not coming from you


atleast them adding in trust allows us to say THEY HAVE NO EXCUSES TO NOT ADD A OPTION TO UPGREAD HOW HARD ALL CONTENT IS optionally so we can challange ourself on massive scale without worrying about trash and people holding us down and back with human error

Yoshida is aiming at players who don't like MMOs. To be honest, it bothers me way more than trusts being added to ARR+.

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Originally Posted by FawkesWyznfarr

I hate trusts and how they take away dev time and resources. Just a make a Hall of the Intermediate. Let people call other players noobs and idiots[...]

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You seem pleasant.

I've been playing this game like 9 years now and I'll be honest the only time I talk to anyone is in Duty Finder content and even then it's typically short greetings. Sometimes I'll make attempts at having small talk but 99.9% of the players in the game don't even bother replying back. My typical day in this game is I log on and do all my dailies and level up a Job for a couple of hours and then wander around doing not much else and watch players do weird things in Limsa.

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Originally Posted by GaleMex

You seem pleasant.

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I've just had it with yoshida's bs and doing the bare minimum. I'm angry at myself for not seeing past the charade sooner.

Funny thing is that no interaction is necessary, which makes the forced grouping even dumber, since it doesn't serve any purpose. As always, people who are inclined to interact with others do so regardless of encouragement, and people who aren't, won't, regardless of encouragement.

That "It's an MMO" argument never held any water anyway. You wanna go back to the "good old days" of MMOs where things like the duty finder didn't exist? Where you truly had to interact with others (that hasn't been necessary in FFXIV for all the years I've spent playing it, which make comments about "community" utter BS) to progress? No? Yeah, 'cause that'd freaking dumb.

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Originally Posted by Misplaced_Marbles

Funny thing is that no interaction is necessary, which makes the forced grouping even dumber, since it doesn't serve any purpose. As always, people who are inclined to interact with others do so regardless of encouragement, and people who aren't, won't, regardless of encouragement.

That "It's an MMO" argument never held any water anyway. You wanna go back to the "good old days" of MMOs where things like the duty finder didn't exist? Where you truly had to interact with others (that hasn't been necessary in FFXIV for all the years I've spent playing it, which make comments about "community" utter BS) to progress? No? Yeah, 'cause that'd freaking dumb.

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There are still MMO's coming out that are like this but they always die or have incredibly low populations because it's a niche concept in todays gaming world.

YoshiP is aiming for the people who after nearly 20 years don't count FFXI and FF14 as "real" Final Fantasies. It'll most likely be a wasted effort given how steadfastly dug in that crowd is (I'm not gonna argue the merits or why they're wrong I am simply describing that contingent of FF fans accurately because in a franchise where people ride or die for every installment, its a noticeable constant).

My question is, if they're gonna cater to those FF fans, are they gonna add a toggle to give us the FF spell naming convention that every other XIV client has but not the ENG client? Cuz if that's all I'm gonna get out of this push then by all means, please proceed YoshiP

I actually see it as future-proofing the game, something that XI also started. It's a numbered FF, and MMOs are not eternal, they shut down, that happens. XI is still being supported by a very small and devoted fanbase, but eventually its servers will have to shut down and SE will have to deal with a big gaping hole where a mainline FF title is meant to be.

By making the main story (mostly) soloable, they're starting to figure out how to keep the games up and maybe re-release them when there's no longer enough players able to support the MMO aspect. DQX (Yoshida's previous project) IS actually releasing a single-player version for that reason. And maybe your grandchildren will one day play XIV's re-release as a single-player game on the PS8 and enjoy the story themselves.

One of the Wildstar devs is quoted as saying, "And solo players are tragically underserved in most MMOs – something like 65% of players tend to play largely solo (Massively Single-player, as it were)."

I think this is a wise move not just for FF fans who were put off by it being an MMO, but a solo-friendly MMO is going to be alluring to a decent chunk of MMO players too. Personally, the first time I played FFXIV I quit at Sastasha because I wasn't interested in an MMO with mandatory group content. I almost quit this last time due to a raid being required. I've suffered through it only because I had no other complaints about the game at the time, but it's never been fun for me. Had I known last year this was the direction the game was going I would've just waited and been a lot happier for it. Once I got to ShB with trusts my enjoyment of the game increased substantially and the trials are the only downside of the MSQ now.

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

That is kind of a poor excuse.

FFXI, was a MMO and a numbered Final Fantasy game. It did not go through the same length of game play changes to make it more of a single player experience as far as I am aware. They added the trust system to allow you to solo most of the games content which there is nothing wrong with, as long as you are not ruining other players experience by changing the game play. But I have not played the game in a long time and there may be other people that could shine a better light on how FFXI made the game more solo friendly.

Also Yoshi P is working on FFXVI so that's 2 flagship RPGs he can practice his single player mechanics there.

But once again, I doubt they have any say on making a single player experience in the game, but I do feel they can go about it in various ways that would be least impactful to the current player base.

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As far as XI goes, you are unawares then. As XI is where the trust system comes from, moreover if I'm not mistaken (if anyone knows better by all means correct me) the trust system in XI is used in open world content, but XI open world content is built differently from XIV's and XI since it's heyday has long since become far more solo friendly from my understanding.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

If you want a solo experience you can do trusts, if you do not then you can play via the Duty Finder with a multiplayer experience. The devs are hardly forcing players into a solo experience. It’s completely optional…

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But the dungeons get dumbed down mechanic wise for everyone, not just for the ones who want a solo experience.

as a FFXI player I wanted to add my two cents. Even after not being able to play FFXI during it's prime, I did enjoy the storylines greatly in FFXI even if it was mostly a solo experience, going out into the dangerous overworld and exploring the unknown was a wonderful feeling of just being an adventurer, not some holy God in FFXIV where puts you in on pedestal where you can "do no wrong." it was very refreshing


and some stories just stick with you like with one of the survivors in the Tavnazian Safehold

This settlement is an extension of the underground complex that served as a haven for the survivors of the war-ravaged Tavnazian Marquisate.

I remember a woman told me that her husband was injured during the War while they were escaping and suffers a case of dementia only to realize later when she told me, that it was her best friend's husband and that she was in love with him.

What happened to her best friend? well as they were escaping the War and people was fleeting from the Orcs that was killing and destroying everything in site, she said she "let go" of her best friend's hand as they were running away.

the Woman has guilt and doesn't know if it her hand slipped or just really wanted to be with her best friend's husband that badly and has to live with that guilt for the rest of her life.

yes a NPC story stuck with me that much and FFXI storyline is dark. I love it




but also FFXI is still getting new story content updates with Ambuscade monthly rotations of NM monsters with different mechanics that isn't avoid aoe's and orange telepathic on the floor.

I remember there was some MP sucking orcs in Ambuscade that was destroying the mages and everything else that can heal like geomancers, red mages, scholars, paladins.

the only way I think was to handle this if you had the CHM trust who heals but doesn't use MP except this was I think 600 Deeds of Heroism which every month, you can only get 40 deeds, or Go with a Dancer with some good Waltz Potency gear and have it heal.

Luckily, I'm a Dancer and I have a good gearset dedicated to healing if the situation happens where the mages die or something.

So we was able to clear version 1: Hard difficulty Ambuscade

Final Fantasy FFXI has you planning around bosses and mechanics

whereas in XIV, it's just go X,Y,Z and pretty much kill the boss one way and that's it.

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Originally Posted by ACE135

But the dungeons get dumbed down mechanic wise for everyone, not just for the ones who want a solo experience.

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Practically every dungeon has been an empty husk of its former self, long before these changes were even incorporated. Not that I necessarily disagree but these dungeons are hardly a staple for difficulty, by any stretch of the imagination. Besides that, I find the syncing to be more of an issue than anything. I think to rework or readjust some mechanics to help facilitate a solo-player experience or to help overcome some of the more abysmal queue times when playing a new character, or just being a new player in general far outweighs the negative in a rework of certain mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Novae

Yoshida is aiming at players who don't like MMOs. To be honest, it bothers me way more than trusts being added to ARR+.

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That's the Problem. Building an MMO and not targeting MMO players... it's beyond dumb.

"Yeah guys we're going to make a new Halo game but we're not gonna target FPS players. No we're going to aim it at players of Animal Crossing"

I prefer interacting with other people. Social skills, like any other ability, can and DO atrophy when not used. I would rather keep my ability to socialize with others. The consequences of losing those skills are just too terrible to think about.

After playing with a friend who plays during off hours and hearing they had to wait 2 hours for Great Gubal Library for the story in HW, I am all for Trusts being added to every story dungeon. One of us basically has to go tank or healer to get into anything at 3am as it stands, having the option to just go "I will see you on the other side of the dungeon" would be fantastic over having to wait forever.

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Originally Posted by ACE135

But the dungeons get dumbed down mechanic wise for everyone, not just for the ones who want a solo experience.

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I don't see where the dungeons have been dumbed down with SHB or EW story dungeons. In addition Criterian dungeons are coming which won't be trust dungeons so the team seems to be working toward more midcore content. Obviously we don't know until they arrive.

Good.

I don't like people and have never done anything with anyone in game besides with the help of duty finder.

Im totally fine with this if the kept it to the MSQ, but the simplification and dumbing down of jobs and optional content really needs to stop, unless its the ease the grind of older content there truely isnt ideal reason to kick the challenge out of challenging content...

I'd just like them to finally make the content in the game harder and just expand Trust to let people who want to play while watching Netflix and have problems pushing more than two buttons play the game through Trust.
Just separate the singleplayer experience from the actual MMO.

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Originally Posted by Kuritzkale

Does anybody else really dislike the direction the devs seem to be interested in taking the game? When I hear them say things like how they want the game to be more solo friendly my head starts to swim, like... it's an MMO. There are singleplayer final fantasy games. FFXIV is not one of them. FFXIV should not cater to people looking for a singleplayer game. I don't necessarily have a problem with people playing the game as a mostly solo experience, but like 90% of story content is ALREADY solo, why make it even more disconnected from the community?

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There are times I like playing solo. There are times I like playing in a party. Sometimes this is a choice. Sometimes it is not. Simply put, I play FFXIV because I like the MMO aspects of it but I also appreciate that I can get something done in 5 minutes or 10 minutes or 20 minutes, etc.

When was the last time the "MMOs shouldn't have much solo content" crowd was totally cool with someone AFKing for 5-10 minutes in the middle of a dungeon? Surely they all said "oh, that's cool. We'll just wait patiently!" We all really know how that ends "if you can't put aside 20 minutes to do this, then you shouldn't have queued in the first place!"

SE is making a home for people that just don't fit the mould that MMO players normally are.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

I don't see where the dungeons have been dumbed down with SHB or EW story dungeons. In addition Criterian dungeons are coming which won't be trust dungeons so the team seems to be working toward more midcore content. Obviously we don't know until they arrive.

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I don't mean ShB and EW dungeons. Look at the patch notes and see for example how many bosses in the ARR dungeons get adjusted, probably for the only reason to get them doable by trusts.

I have mixed feelings, the game already feels almost like a lobby game with how much of the content is instanced. I think it's probably good in general for new players, but overall it might be bad for the game. I really wish they would do more to utilize the open world than just fate grinds and keep players active outside of big cities where they stand around queueing for everything and staring at each-other to keep this game feeling actively social and community driven on some level rather than just a chatroom, and I feel like 7.0 would be a good starting point in designing regions of this game that are built around more social gameplay.

I am fine with everything relating to the MSQ being solo.

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Originally Posted by Nekokaori

No its a good thing, Only ONLY FINAL FANTASY XIV forces interaction and social bullshit

Wow- everything was soloable u could play alone if u desired
dcuo same deal
Mabinogi same thing
guild wars same deal
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Every other mmo does not hold content hostage unless you "social with x number of people" every other game is and was decent enough to make it opitonal more so for the story part of the game.

As long as u can walk into Limsa and see people cluttering your path its a mmo regardless of 100% o f the game having all content optional solo.


Some days I don't want to deal with people and desire to beat them to the inch of their life, and i get on a game to relax and calm down forcing me into a group and then expecting me to be friendly 24/7 without a word is not only wrong but is the most retarded bullshit ever.

Some days im perfectly fine playing with people SO LONG AS ITS MY CHOICE 2 PLAY WITH PEOPLE. it hasnt been our choice to play with others since 2005 on mmos now its all forced interaction which is and always will be the most horrible thing in the world

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yes, I was actually saying very directly that 14 should hold you hostage until you interact with a certain number of people, you are very smart!
14 has a great community, I just personally dislike the direction the game seems to be headed where you have to go out of your way to experience interaction with any part of it, unless you count just seeing people running around in the world with you player interaction, which I don't. FF14 could be doing a lot to foster community interaction, just look at the stuff WoW has done in the past, what about something like a war effort? Or maybe make grand companies actually mean something? Facilitate interaction between players other than the occasional silent dungeon run. And I don't have any idea why you think I'm under the impression you need to be nice to everyone always, but it is actually very easy to not be rude to people outright, lol. If you wanna wind down in a game and don't want to interact with other players go play a singleplayer game.

No one is forced to do the new dungeons runs with npc. It is optional and as a dd instead of waiting 20 minutes for a roulette run, why not.

There are cons and pros to the decisions.

I personally don't mind because now people won't have an excuse when they get told to do it in trusts.

Hell I queued up as a dps yesterday, queue took 15 minutes forgot it was running w/e, got into the run had a marauder tank with a level 80 paladin & a level 80 whm single pulling.
It was insufferable, made me remember why I don't queue dps.

Eureka was a forced group experience. I think it was an experiment to see if people did like forming groups on their own. If they liked the old MMO type content. Lots of people hated it. They complained a lot about forced grouping, no queued groups, BA not being accessible. I personally liked Eureka and did it when it was new. I did Bozja/Zadnor too. They tried a matchmaking grouping system in Bozja. People liked it better.

The trust in ShB was an experiment too. It was a better version of the squadrons. It does add a way for the game to stay alive once the subs start to decline someday. I think whether or not it’s going to be good for the game long term is going to depend on what group content gets added and how fun it is. If group content starts to suffer because of it, then it’s a problem. I’m reserving judgment for a few patches so I can see how this develops.

I think this guy really covers well a lot of my concerns of the over all game. It goes over, the lack of content, single player focus, ect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwYqkuju_Fc

Sometimes I felt playing online in FF14 makes no difference playing solo :/ It's just awkward that some people don't chat back at all, people not being considerate to other party members eg tanks not using mitigation at all xD ,dps using mobility to pull mobs for tank? (kinda rude i think) and some healers just spam glare/malefic with no heals/utility at all

Although I'm happy that solo play is available since it will allow those that treats this MMO as a solo JRPG to their own and let the people that wants to play with other people together with respect and consideration for other human players :D Although it is concerning people are becoming more reclusive, evident thru the lack of social interaction in MMO's these days. :o

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

I think this guy really covers well a lot of my concerns of the over all game. It goes over, the lack of content, single player focus, ect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwYqkuju_Fc

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I personally felt that the content is sufficient for those with limited amount of time to play games or playing several games at a time. I've been rushing from ARR to EW so I can do the upcoming 6.1 stuff and it made me realize I rush thru 10 years content in 10 days :/ but filling the content gap with community made content will work for those that play this game full time :D

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

I think this guy really covers well a lot of my concerns of the over all game. It goes over, the lack of content, single player focus, ect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwYqkuju_Fc

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He makes very good points. It’s strange to me to see people building up 6.1 as if it’s some huge patch…compare it to 4.1 and i don’t think the sentiments would be the same. Stormblood gave us primal weapons for the new jobs, unique ultimate weapon models for the new jobs, we had more dungeons back then, an entire housing district, etc etc and it didn’t come at the cost of anything else. Meanwhile now we’ve had to lose out on things for some reason despite the game making more money and supposedly having many players.

I'm wondering if perhaps there could be a compromise and it wouldn't require immense story re-works. Perhaps have the entirety of the MSQ (and its dungeon content) available for solo play-through for story's sake, but remove the chests and glamour rewards, minions, etc from the solo story versions. Incentivize people to party up with others for the multiplayer versions of the content which will be the only way to get the rewards you want. It will allow them to have their story that everyone can experience but then also save the multiplayer content and incentivize people to use it in that way.

Not going to get into unsynced runs or anything like that, just shower thoughts. I'm not a game dev though, what do I know? I don't particularly care one way or another as long as the game is here to play and I can still see and interact with other people.

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Originally Posted by Serious-Cat

I personally felt that the content is sufficient for those with limited amount of time to play games or playing several games at a time. I've been rushing from ARR to EW so I can do the upcoming 6.1 stuff and it made me realize I rush thru 10 years content in 10 days :/ but filling the content gap with community made content will work for those that play this game full time :D

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See when you just join the game in EW and tell me that, I can't really take your opinion with much merit. I envy how much content you have to do, where I have played this for a decade. The new patch will be a day or two of new content, outside of the gated weekly lock out for the 24man or if I want to climb pvp ranks after that I will be back to nothing to really do in the game again. Now I know what people are going to say Yoshi P says to take breaks. At the same time, is it a good sign that I want to play the game, but I am taking a break because there is nothing in it for me to do? Should I come back from a break play the game two days only to go back to a break because the lack of content longevity? How is that healthy for the game? Don't come at me with the just cause the content isn't for you doesn't mean it isn't content either, cause that's just a childish excuse no brainer excuse you can make about any piece of content. Who defends a game having less content it just blows my mind people will defend this. Not saying you did but just in general this community is just so mind blowingly shallow.

The game needs a better focal point, and I don't think a solo friendly experience is needed at this time. Again, I don't really care that it is being added, I think many players will like it. The reasons for adding I think are for the wrong reasons and are not going to work the way SE is hoping. It is also a huge amount of work, and money to make this work during a time where this game has hit a huge peak in player count where those resources could be allocated to more content. I also really don't like the direction the game play is taking and I only feel these changes are happening to make the game feel more solo friendly and that is a problem. SE should not detract the current game play for the current players for a group of players that likely are not going to jump ship onto this game. Most of this game is already very solo friendly as is in its current iteration so this all just feels unnecessary to focus on at this time.

By all means, I would love people to give me 3 reasons why this game as far along as it is should not be getting more content. (Budget does not count, cause I can blame that on Yoshi P not allocating the funds correctly so I don't wanna hear that BS)

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Originally Posted by Serious-Cat

I personally felt that the content is sufficient for those with limited amount of time to play games or playing several games at a time. I've been rushing from ARR to EW so I can do the upcoming 6.1 stuff and it made me realize I rush thru 10 years content in 10 days :/ but filling the content gap with community made content will work for those that play this game full time :D

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slow down.
You're gonna hurt yourself.
Enjoy the experience.
Take in the sights.
The journey is as good as the goal.

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

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sounds like you are just burnt out on the game. there's a great amount of content on it's way imo, if you've done literally everything that interests you and you're bored, that's not really the game's fault lol. clearly the advice to take breaks is healthy for the game because it's doing great by every metric, better than it ever has. and it is sound advice. I got tired of the stale combat, took a month off to play other games, came back and it's fun to play again. as for solo play, the trust system is already developed so reworking old content, which needed some tlc anyways, realistically wouldn't take as much dev time as you're assuming.

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Originally Posted by Kuritzkale

Does anybody else really dislike the direction the devs seem to be interested in taking the game? When I hear them say things like how they want the game to be more solo friendly my head starts to swim, like... it's an MMO. There are singleplayer final fantasy games. FFXIV is not one of them. FFXIV should not cater to people looking for a singleplayer game. I don't necessarily have a problem with people playing the game as a mostly solo experience, but like 90% of story content is ALREADY solo, why make it even more disconnected from the community?

I don't think it's bad to occasionally force the player to interact with the community in the form of a dungeon run, or a trial completion. Why would a new player EVER choose to run dungeons with other players when every dungeon and trial needed for MSQ completion is doable with trusts? Not to mention the issues that crop up with needing every piece of new content (besides maybe savages and ultimates) to be doable by NPCs as well. And just to be clear, there are arguments for doing all of these things I dislike, I personally just do not think they justify the negatives that come with removing social aspects from your MMO.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I've been lurking the forums like a psycho for the past couple of days hoping somebody else might bring this topic up, but no luck. I've just never seen a game with such a friendly and interactive community completely ignore that aspect of their MMO. The players keep the community interaction in this game afloat because the devs seem completely unwilling to. To anyone who doesn't run content that requires party finder, when was the last time you NEEDED to interact with another player, in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game you play? Come on SE, it's IN THE NAME.

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It's not even an MMO anymore at this point.

There are people that skip over this FF (and XI) because it can't be played solo. Apparently there are enough of them that it's been thought that at least MSQ should be a (mostly) solo affair to at least get people to try it.

It's not a bad thing, as people still have to learn fights to get through them. Maybe some of these folks will hang around and play with other people after running enough duty support dungeons.

As far as Castrum / Prae goes, that's been long overdue for an update. They just don't fit with the rest of the game. There needs to be more consistency in the game and this patch is going to do a good amount to alleviate that problem.